Erasing HIVs “SCARLET LETTER”

March 1, 2012

By extrapolating evidence that OMSJ’s HIV Innocence Group has developed since 2009, it is becoming clear that thousands of Americans and millions around the world have been misdiagnosed as “HIV-positive” by clinicians who use flawed tests – tests that were never intended to detect HIV or HIV antibodies – to defraud taxpayers and insurers, by selling toxic drugs and unnecessary “treatments” to vulnerable patients. Because of the widespread graft, corruption and politics associated with HIV and AIDS, honest clinicians risk retaliation from complicit medical boards if they expose or contradict a misdiagnosis, leaving patients with nowhere else to go.

While no part of this report can be construed as legal or medical advice, it outlines the legal, scientific, medical and political forces involved, along with a general strategy for victims who hope to untangle themselves from HIV’s “scarlet letter.”

1 Mar, Clarksville (TN) – This week, prosecutors dismissed charges against Joseph D. Thomas, who was accused of unlawfully exposing a former girlfriend to HIV. When OMSJ produced evidence that the defendant’s doctors were incompetent, his case became OMSJ’s 39th victory in less than three years. Since 2009, OMSJ’s HIV Innocence Group has saved dozens of misdiagnosed HIV patients like Thomas from prison sentences that can extend to decades.

Despite the hysteria and marketing of the so-called “AIDS pandemic,” there is little evidence that HIV was more than a political disease in the US, Europe (2), Australia and South Africa [2007, 2012]. Despite credible admissions that HIV is largely a marketing scam that can be cured within weeks without medication, the news media rarely reports anything that might alienate their pharmaceutical advertisers.

OMSJ’s now-routine impeachment of “HIV experts” suggests that thousands of Americans are being unnecessarily poisoned by toxic drugs and stigmatized by false-positive tests; tests that are used to defraud millions of dollars from insurers and taxpayers every year to promote what amfAR co-founder Joseph Sonnabend MD calls a total fraud and scam. (More about history and politics of HIV is posted here.)

In one OMSJ case (currently under appeal), drug giant Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) issued a $2.9 million “grant” to Wichita clinician Donna Sweet MD, weeks after she helped US Air Force lawyers send one of her misdiagnosed patients to federal prison. BMS and Gilead Sciences are among the latest HIV drug companies that are accused of paying kickbacks to doctors who unnecessarily prescribe toxic drugs to healthy patients. These companies are not alone: Since 2004, the pharmaceutical industry has paid more than $12 billion to settle thousands of complaints related to the illegal marketing of drugs that kill or injure more than a million Americans annually.

But even when no charges are filed, a misdiagnosis can be devastating. For example:

Child services bureaucrats are pressuring a young couple to administer HIV drugs to their children or lose them to foster parents who will. Foster parents receive twice as much federal money for medicated children than un-medicated foster children. The young couple must leave the state to protect their children. Their attorney withdrew from the case when it threatened his wife’s employment at a local hospital.

An angry husband divorced his wife after an “HIV expert” claimed that she had acquired HIV. Distraught and afraid to conceive children, she underwent a tubal ligation months before other doctors established that she was not infected after all.

As bad as these cases sound, these are the “lucky ones” who recognize HIV for what it is. Because of the shame and stigma associated with HIV’s “scarlet letter,” some join the pharmaceutical marketing campaign, while many more suffer and die in the shadows.

MEDICAL STANDARD OF CARE

Part of the problem is related to what is called the “Medical Standard of Care,” which theoretically allows good doctors to weed out the bad ones. Unfortunately, the medical “peer review” process is often used as a weapon against conscientious physicians who deviate from the healthcare industry’s low “standard of care.”

The medical “standard of care” means that if 10,000 doctors receive pharmaceutical kickbacks for prescribing the DNA chain terminator AZT to babies, and another doctor who understands cell biology and has read the medical and scientific literature thinks that nutritional supplements are better, the 10,000 can claim that the “disruptive” doctor is dangerous to patients and order a review of his files. If they successfully suspend his clinical privileges for one month or longer, his name is sent to the National Physician Database (NPDB), effectively ending his career.

DISRUPTIVE PHYSICIANS

Sole practitioners who successfully compete against lower-performing doctors and hospitals are routinely targeted as “disruptive.”

Competitors and hospitals typically goad their unsuspecting targets with false accusations that their recklessness is dangerous to their patients. Once provoked, the hospital cites the target’s anger as evidence of his or her “disruptive” nature. They will then cite the behavior as evidence of the target’s mental instability and recommend remedies like shadowing doctors with security guards during visits with patients, or psychological counseling and remediation. At each step, the belligerents carefully document the target’s seemingly irrational responses to build their case.

Doctors who fight can spend a million dollars or more defending themselves, while others cut their losses and find another place to live – leaving competitors to pick over their former patients. And because the Health Care Quality Improvement Act (HCQIA – pronounced HICK-WA) indemnifies peer review boards from liability, they can often destroy a career with statutory immunity, drafted by healthcare law firms like Horty-Springer.

As Gresham’s Law predicts, the pervasive waste, fraud and incompetence rewards the corrupt, while displacing good doctors and withdrawing effective care from patients who need them most. Within this criminogenic environment, HIV clinics, predatory hospitals and HMOs thrive.

Although HIV tests cannot detect HIV or identify HIV antibodies, the medical “standard of care” encourages doctors to PRESUME that their patients are infected with HIV anyway. And because targeted groups (i.e. homosexuals, minorities, drug abusers and welfare recipients) are less likely to question what authority figures tell them, HIV clinicians are rewarded economically for testing healthy asymptomatic patients so that they can order more meaningless tests and prescribe deadly toxins to patients who don’t need them. Healthy patients who take these drugs can become gravely ill very fast, and many die of kidney failure, heart attacks, strokes and more. Meanwhile, celebrities like Magic Johnson are transformed into walking propaganda billboards for AIDS drugs and HIV test companies. Since he tested HIV positive in 1991, Johnson became a spokesperson for HIV test maker Abbott Labs and drug companies like Glaxo, accepting millions to promote HIV drugs and tests.

Because few general practitioners understand the alchemy of HIV and AIDS, they typically refer patients to “HIV experts” like those routinely discredited by OMSJ in criminal and civil court. But if a conscientious doctor educates himself enough to deviate from the medical “standard of care,” he risks the loss of his career.

Tellingly, as a technically, HIV clinicians are carefully instructed not to claim that patients are infected with HIV.

As the leading HIV-credentialing medical board in the US, the American Academy of HIV Medicine (AAHIVM) provides this psychologically-manipulative script, which is designed to instill fear without actually telling them that they’re infected with HIV.

After using ELISA and Western Blot tests that only presume infection, clinicians are instructed to deliver this carefully-crafted script:

“Your HIV test result is positive.”

Note that all HIV-test labels warn clinicians not to use HIV tests to diagnose HIV. As such, the test results are meaningless – a fact that clinicians are not instructed to disclose to patients.

“You may need to take time to adjust to this. Many people say that it gets easier once you get over the initial shock. With proper medical and social support, people with HIV can expect to lead very productive lives.”

Nothing in this language suggests that HIV tests do not detect HIV.

“Now that you have HIV it’s important that you receive regular medical follow-up, even if you are feeling healthy.”

The clinicians still does not say, “Based upon my careful diagnosis and the following clinical symptoms, etc., it is my opinion that you are infected with HIV.” As the test labels claim, the asymptomatic patient’s alleged infection is only presumed. If the asymptomatic patient feels healthy, he’s told that he must return for regular follow-ups – further disrupting his or her life and providing more time for the clinician to groom the healthy patient into believing he or she will soon get sick.)

Who can be supportive of you in dealing with this?”

This advice encourages the target to spread the misinformation to those closest to him, making him vulnerable to rejection and isolation from those closest to him.

“What questions do you have about HIV infection?”

This opens the door for more pharmaceutical propaganda and marketing information that promotes the impression that a competent test and diagnosis was conducted.

“Knowing that you have HIV, what are your concerns about giving HIV to someone else?”

“Who do you believe may need to know about your result? Are there particular partners you are worried about?”

These questions allow clinicians to collect data on the target’s associates and romantic relationships so that health departments can cold-call the target’s relationships to instill more fear and further isolate the target under the pretext of “public safety.”

“What happens when you and your partner fight?”

This allows clinicians and health department officials to identify wedges that can be used to divide the target from relationships, or coerce partners into getting tested unnecessarily.

“What will you do after you leave here?”

“Who will you talk with about this news?”

“How interested would you be in getting a referral for services to help you live with HIV?”

These questions are designed to establish whether the clinician’s efforts to hook another patient were successful.

AAHIVM’s Board Chair is none other than Bristol-Myers Squibb’s $2.9 million grant winner Donna Sweet MD, who is also the former Board Chair of the American College of Physicians (ACP), which is also affiliated with – and funded by – the pharmaceutical industry. The AAHIVM and ACP are just two of many pharmaceutical marketing firms that use “patient care” and fear as pretexts to push deadly drugs and unnecessary treatment for the drug industry.

MALPRACTICE CLAIMS

Although the US Constitution provides for a tort system that ordinary citizens can use against giant corporations, legislators (funded by healthcare and pharmaceutical industry lobbyists) have passed laws that cap awards to patients who are harmed by products, procedures and devices. In this way, “tort reform” protects the criminogenic environment.

As OMSJ’s attorneys now routinely expose dangerously incompetent clinicians during criminal trials, drug and healthcare providers use their multi-billion dollar profits to bury victims under mountains of legal motions and court filings. If victims “get lucky,” a settlement typically requires non-disclosure agreements that effectively prevents other victims from learning of the case. But if a victim wins a verdict, most “tort reform” malpractice caps leave victims with nothing but legal bills.

While criminals who injure or kill typically face decades in prison, there are no prison sentences or “three-strikes” laws that protect victims from corporations like Tenet Healthcare and Merck. When a law firm finally prevails in a class-action claim, these companies create shell companies to accept blame and pay off their victims with million-dollar cuts from their billion dollar profits.

FEW SECOND OPINIONS

For patients who are said to be infected with HIV, second opinions are rare. Few doctors challenge the “standard of care,” and treating clinicians who make mistakes rarely admit them.

Few people understand the social isolation that comes with the misdiagnosis of a fatal sexually-transmitted disease. For this reason, patients must take control of their own lives.

Because of the unprecedented success of the HIV marketing campaign, the test is often a death sentence. The test tells us that there is no future, no marriage, no offspring, no meaningful career or anything else – unless, of course, the patient subjects himself to millions of dollars in unnecessary tests, drugs and clinical visits.

CRIMINAL HIV LAWS

For “HIV experts” like Donna Sweet to receive federal AIDS funding, 36 states have passed criminal laws that contain specific language like this:

Any person who knows that he or she is HIV infected is guilty of a felony if he or she, without first disclosing his or her HIV status, (1) knowingly has sexual intercourse or performs or submits to any sexual act…

To confirm knowledge, health departments and clinics typically ask patients to sign documents that affirm knowledge without any proof that the patient learned anything from the unknown and untested third parties. Unlike a stump that someone can point to and say, “I’m missing my arm,” defendants cannot know what their own doctors don’t know how to diagnose clinically. Once tested, a patient can only parrot what others have told him. Unless challenged by OMSJ’s legal, medical, scientific and investigative team, defendants have little hope to avoid a wrongful conviction.

In states like Ohio, prosecutors aren’t even required to prove that someone is infected with anything. Although speeding tickets and drunk driving arrests require the appearance of all witnesses and a credible chain of custody, being told by someone, who was told by someone else, who read something written by someone who was never ordered to appear in court, was enough to send Andre Davis to prison for 32 years.

TAKING CHARGE OF THEIR LIVES

While many patients are resigned to a slow death from HIV drugs, others want to rid themselves from the stigma without suffering the indignity of public ridicule, criminal trials and hysterical media reports.

Just as OMSJ’s team now routinely exposes “HIV experts” as incompetent, patients can now also test their doctor’s credibility for themselves. Patients have no reason to know or believe what doctors claim to be a credible diagnosis.

CREATING A PAPER TRAIL

When OMSJ Director Clark Baker trained police officers during the 1980s, many rookies expressed concern about video cameras that might record their statements or behavior. His response:

“If a highly trained officer continuously performs as if he or she is being videotaped, a videotape can only corroborate his good performance.”

The same holds true for clinicians. If he or she knows what they’re doing, correspondence and recording equipment will not intimidate them. On the other hand, the fact that a clinician refuses to record his opinions (and the supporting evidence of his opinions), answer questions, or allow their comments to be recorded should raise serious questions about the clinician’s credibility and trustworthiness. Clinicians are not gods. Patients should never forget that some of humanity’s most depraved behavior was performed by doctors in the name of medicine. The fact that drug companies routinely pay doctors to push drugs speaks for itself.

OMSJ does not wish to dissuade sick patients from seeking sound medical advice.

OMSJ does not wish to change anyone’s mind. If you believe that you are infected with HIV and that your doctor should not be questioned, OMSJ urges you to follow your beliefs.

Some people prefer the food stamps, free cell phones, disability checks and parking permits that their “disabled status” provides for them over a clean bill of health that would see them gainfully employed. Said one long-time HIV patient:

“I know HIV is a scam and know that the drugs are probably killing me, but if I admit it and stop taking the drugs I will lose my friends, my disability and my lifestyle – and I’d have to look for a job at 50!”

Whether you’re 18 or 80, and want to start a new life without the stigma, the first step requires you to ask your doctor about your diagnosis. These guidelines should help.

For success, patients should have a computer, a printer, and patience.

If you express anger, arrogance or impatience, your clinician will use your anger against you – just as hospitals use anger against “disruptive doctors.” Don’t give your doctor any reason to think or accuse you of being angry. You want him/her to demonstrate their behavior to you.

None of these letters are perfect for you. Write in your own voice and style. These are your letters – not OMSJs.

ALL LETTERS should request a written response within two weeks. They must be sent by CERTIFIED MAIL, with a receipt that confirms delivery. Save copies of all your letters with the receipts in a safe place. If someone accuses you of knowingly exposing others to HIV ten days or ten years later, these letters can help you to establish exactly how much you and your clinician know – and don’t know.

KEEP A DIARY of all correspondence, phone calls, emails and visits related to HIV. Record the names and contact information of all medical and government officials who talk to you about HIV.

1. Your first letter reminds your doctor who you are. It should contain short questions about a) the tests he used, b) how the diagnosis was made, and c) the kind of response you seek.

If you are asked to come in for a visit, do so – and bring a recording device. During your visit, turn it on and lay it in plain sight so that both sides will know that the conversation is being recorded.

In some states and countries, it is illegal to secretly record someone. If the device is sitting in the open, it should not violate any laws. If you’re not sure, turn it on and say clearly that you are recording your conversation “because what they will say is important and you don’t want to misunderstand anything they’ve said.” If they refuse, leave the recorder on and re-state that they want the recording device off. Then leave the clinic, go home and write another letter.

If the doctor happens to respond in writing and identifies the test used, you’ll probably find the test in this list. If he doesn’t identify it, pick one test, and ask if he used that test. Mail your certified letter.

Your follow-up letters should ask exactly how he conducted his diagnosis. He should explain exactly how he ruled out each of the 100+ conditions that are known to “cross-react” to HIV tests – conditions that include flu, tetanus and hepatitis shots, pregnancy, colds, the flu, physical injuries, and so forth. Your doctor should be able to list ALL OF THE KNOWN CROSS-REACTIONS and explain exactly how he ruled out each one. If he fails to answer this simple test, it suggests that he did not conduct a competent diagnosis.

Just as a policeman must rule out gunshot wounds, stoke, diabetic shock or other ailments before arresting someone for drunk driving, your doctor must identify and all of the known conditions that cause false positive test results and explain exactly how he ruled them out.

Your objective is to pin down the doctor. Don’t let him play “hide the penny” with you.

Once you’re satisfied that your first letter and follow-up questions have been answered, move to second letter.

This is important because the CDC has used a CD4 count of under 200 to identify AIDS cases. Unless the doctor can describe exactly how the test was conducted, you must assume that the test used was improperly calibrated, was recalled, or was conducted by a lab tech who didn’t know what he was doing. The fact that both Lab Corp and Quest Diagnostics paid multi-million dollar fines to settle felony complaints should be enough to ask many follow-up questions.

3. Your third letter can ask for a complete list of all of the pharmaceutical reps who visited his clinic in the past decade and how much money, free trips, speaking fees and other payment he received from the drug industry.

4. Use this letter if you are asked to return to the clinic for additional testing.

Because all HIV tests are inaccurate, unreliable and presumptive, taking one or a thousand tests is as unreliable as using one or a thousand broken clocks to verify the time. Pin down the clinician on the tests that you’ve already taken before wasting your time with new tests.

For example, ask him how he ruled out Herpes simplex, and if he knew that the virus is known to cross-react with HIV tests.

Except for the first letter, the rest can be modified and sent in any order. At some point, ask for copies of all of your medical records. If a criminal complaint is ever filed against you, these letters and medical records will likely come in handy. More likely than not, securing the records early will prevent someone from making changes when you start asking them embarrassing questions.